Sometimes You Just Know It's Going to be Good.
When a painting almost paints itself…
Painting is hard. It’s funny, because the physical act of applying paint to paper isn’t difficult at all! We start with finger painting as soon as we are old enough to not eat the paint (and sometimes I think I might end up back where I started; I am having so much fun with playful painting), and painting stays fun and easy until we start to quantify whether or not what we are making is any good, when we start having expectations for our work to meet a certain standard.
I spend so much of my painting time simply working to get away from my own expectations. I know that there is a place of freedom, where a painting comes alive before the brush even hits the paper. It’s a magical place, and like all magical places, there’s no straightforward route to arrival. Sometimes the wardrobe is just a wardrobe, and other times it leads to a wintry forest in another world, and I don’t get to decide when that happens.
But sometimes, very rarely, I just know. THIS is the painting that is going to feel like a gift, springing to life under my hand. Oh, those times are special! One of the first times that really happened for me was when I painted my very first abstract landscape scene. It’s one of my earliest YouTube videos and one of the most popular even after all these years.
Ideas come when you are working. I was able to paint this scene even though I had never painted an abstract landscape before, because I had been thinking about the reference photo and the first version of the painting, because I was pondering how to transition to a looser painting style, because I was studying art by loose expressive artists like Jean Haines. I was thinking about painting, almost eating and breathing watercolor, and before I touched brush to paper, I saw in my head what I was going to do. (In fact, I imagined this painting shortly before falling asleep the night before!)
Earlier this month, I found myself doing the same thing with a new type of landscape painting. I have been teaching myself how to paint an urban landscape, a subject that has felt intimidating (and in my rural region, rather foreign). I have studied this one reference photo for hours, developed a dozen or more paintings from the scene (ranging from 5 minute sketches to longer, multi-layered explorations), and so when the “magic” happened, I was SO ready.
My Montreal reference photo. I know this photo pretty well by now!!
My “this is the ONE” painting.
There are a few things I’ve learned to trust in my watercolor journey. I can’t predict when a painting is going to work. I can’t even know what the end result of the painting I’m working on is going to be. In choosing to be an intuitive artist, I’ve had to let go of certainty and replace it with trust. I might not know what beautiful things I’m going to paint, and when they will come to life on the paper, but I can know that if I choose a path and persist along it, I will arrive at somewhere even better than I thought at the start. That’s what makes it magic.
Looking for some quick activities to help you warm up and be fearless?
This guide will help you get out of a creative rut!